


thursdays, eleven to midnight

by Spooks (agonizer)



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: AU, M/M, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-02 12:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13318443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agonizer/pseuds/Spooks
Summary: The late night radio slot is usually a quiet affair for Ryan Bergara--if it weren't for that Shane guy all of a sudden, who justhasto disagree with everything he says.





	1. Chapter 1

“ _Aaand_ we’re back with the second half of the Witching Hour, where we take a long, critical look at the unsolved mysteries that keep you up at night, with your host, Ryan Bergara—tonight we’re turning our eye to the strange death of Gloria Ramirez, or as you might know her…” Pause for effect. “The _toxic_ woman.” 

Outside the booth, the sign turns on, and the words ON AIR glow brightly for everyone to read. Inside the booth, Ryan readjusts his headset, swivels around in his chair, and hits the button to queue in his intro theme, and leans back for the six seconds that he lets it play before he starts talking over it again.

“In the first half of today’s episode, we talked about the odd circumstances of Gloria Ramirez’s death, and the effect it had on everyone working in the emergency room that night. And for those of you just tuning in: Gloria Ramirez was a thirty-one year old woman diagnosed with cervical cancer and admitted to our very own Riverside General Hospital with strange symptoms that ended up affecting a total of twenty-three of the twenty-seven people working the ER that night.”

The Witching Hour is Ryan’s hour—it’s not actually _the_ witching hour, because no sane radio station bothers running anything but reruns at 3 a.m. in the morning, instead it’s eleven to twelve p.m. on Thursdays on KYSR, a full hour of Ryan talking about unsolved mysteries and giving his input on the theories surrounding them. 

It’s not prime time; prime air time is saved for overly excited duos during rush hour traffic, the kind that eventually grinds on Ryan’s nerves, and he certainly doesn’t mind getting the late night crowd. It’s smaller, but he draws enough of an audience to stay on air, and he gets an adequate amount of callers that he doesn’t have to stretch the mysteries out any thinner than they need to be. 

Ryan fancies himself the Fox Mulder of the radio station, and it works for him, all things considered. 

“That being said, let’s get into the theories…” He pushes another slider upward, easing in the background music for the theory portion of the show. 

Ryan props open the manila folder with today’s notes—it’s for his own enjoyment more than anything, it’s not like anyone listening knows about his little official looking folders—and starts detailing the theories: mass hysteria affecting the hospital staff, driving everyone to paranoia and even physical symptoms, toxic leaks and hazardous hospital conditions, a cover-up and … alien abduction.

It’s one of the sillier theories, but there’s also no way anyone can decidedly _rule out_ aliens, and it gives Ryan a good chuckle, so he throws it in, too.

This is the part, once he starts getting into it, where he takes calls from listeners to answer questions and exchange ideas about the many, many theories that usually surround the cases he shares on the air. It brings a little more life into the show, and as a bonus, it makes him feel less isolated alone in the studio at this time of day. 

“We’ve got three songs coming up, and afterwards, I’ll be answering your calls – so get those questions ready, I want to hear what _you_ think!”

Ryan reads the station’s phone number out and queues in the music before he turns his microphone off; three songs is his cue to get another cup of coffee and reheat a muffin in the microwave. 

By the time Ryan gets to this part of his show, everyone else has usually left the studio and while he doesn’t, per se, mind the silence and having the space to himself, it’s also quiet enough that he starts appreciating the calls and talking to another human being, after spending an hour expounding on gruesome murders and the like. 

Cup of coffee in hand, plate of muffin set down next to the switchboard, Ryan settles back in and puts his headphones on, just in time to hear the last couple notes of some Carnival Youth. The line is already lit up that someone’s calling, and Ryan picks up right when the song ends. 

“Welcome back to the Witching Hour, we’re here with our first caller of the night! Who do I have on the line?”

“Yeah, hi, my name’s Shane—” Not a regular voice Ryan recognizes, but the guy sounds pleasant enough, younger than many of the callers he gets. “And I just have the one question, really.”

“Well, have at it, I’m all ears,” Ryan encourages, and takes a sip of his coffee as he waits for Shane to speak again.

“Yeeeah,” Shane’s voice suddenly does a complete tonal shift, into something bordering on downright livid, “What. The fuck. Aliens? Are you _kidding_ me?”

Ryan chokes on his coffee. “Excu—what?”

“No, no no no. You have all these plausible theories, had me really on board there for a second, and then you—you fucking throw in aliens?”

Shane sounds somewhere between exasperated and genuinely worked up over this, and Ryan just about splutters before he can catch himself.

“I mean, I’m not saying aliens _did_ do this, but—”

“You _can’t_ , because they _didn’t_ ,” Shane shoots back immediately, and yeah—aliens had been kind of a silly theory.

Then why, oh why, does Ryan suddenly feel the urge to double down and defend it?

“But can you—” Ryan bristles. “ _Definitively_ rule out aliens?”

“What?” Shane sounds stunned for a second, and Ryan can hear the static on the line, then a confused, reluctant, “ _No_ , but—” Another pause, but Shane picks up wind again, “I can’t definitively rule out aliens didn’t abduct your brain, either.” 

And Ryan wants to be offended, he really does, but instead he quickly mutes his mic so he can just laugh to himself for a few seconds, and he has to take a deep, calming breath before he can turn it back on and respond.

“Okay, smart guy, what do you think of our other theories?” Ryan sounds a little more smugly challenging than intended, but he can’t really help himself, for some reason. “There’s the theory that the whole staff suffered from mass hysteria—”

“Plausible,” comes from the other end of the line, and Ryan continues on, “—but the staff insists that’s not what happened to them.”

“Well, of course they don’t, it’s mass hysteria, it’s not a _flashmob_.” And he sounds so annoyed, yet matter-of-fact, that Ryan can’t help himself but badly hide his chuckle into his arm. “It’s not like they were all in on it, having a swell ol’ time losing their minds for an evening, Ryan.” 

The way he says his name, like a lecturer, has Ryan laughing again, and this time he can’t hide it. 

“Okay, okay, so mass hysteria is an option. What about the hazardous conditions at the hospital?” Somehow, Ryan’s tone jumps right back into challenging, and he gets a thoughtful ‘hmm’ from the other end.

“From everything that we’ve heard, she might as well have been admitted with the sniffles and ended up dead, so I’m not ruling that one out,” Shane, if that is even his name, agrees, reasonably.

Ryan nods, even if no one can see him. “Okay. Chemical reactions?”

“Reasonable. They could have looked into it, but it’s kind of telling that the hospital just ‘lost’ the blood samples—“ Apparently, Shane has been carefully listening to the whole show. “So I am not saying it might not be a cover-up of their conditions. These are all very likely, sane theories.”

Another nod, and Ryan pauses for a second, then, smirk on his face, asks, “What makes aliens so different, then?”

There’s static on the line, then a very, very flat, “I am hanging up. Now.” and the line goes dead.

Ryan is stunned into a second of silence—then he breaks out into laughter again.

“Okay, there you have it, listeners, and that wraps up our show for today—what theory do you think holds true in the mysterious case of Gloria Ramirez? Message us at—“ He reads off his email address at the station, and has to take actual effort to keep the laughter out of his voice, “Or call and leave us a message on the usual number. Until next week, listeners… and as always: stay vigilant.”

Ryan turns on the ad segment and the automated night run, then packs up his stuff and heads out into a warm Los Angeles night, with the call and the strange Shane guy still on his mind. 

_What an oddball,_ he thinks, both amused and confused alike, _but that’s probably the last I heard of that guy._

He’s not wrong, entirely.

He’s not right, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for this absolutely wonderful idea goes to [pichiba](http://pichiba.tumblr.com) on tumblr, who drew the wonderful [picture](http://pichiba.tumblr.com/post/169456261513/a-buzzfeed-unsolvedshyan-au-in-which-ryan-is-a) that kicked this off and let me play in her AU sandbox :'D
> 
> I'm not the first and I'm sure I'm not the last to play with this idea, but hey, more cake for everyone? So, yeah, I decided adding another story to my to-do-list was what I want to do, apparently, so please excuse my ever growing WIP pile and thank you for reading <3


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a certain amount of masochism, Ryan sometimes thinks, to do what he does. Not just the late hours – though they can be exhausting, the Witching Hour alone isn’t enough to support himself, so he has to do his research on top of his day job – but especially the hours spent poring over the creepy, sometimes gorey things he researches for the show. 

Ryan doesn’t think of himself as paranoid, per _se_ , but spending this amount of time looking at the combination unsolved crimes and ghost stories would leave any sane man with a healthy lack of trust in the police force and concern for his wellbeing. 

So, no. He’s not paranoid, he’s a well-read, reasonable person, is what he tells himself, wide-awake at two in the morning, and going over all the theories he spent his evening reading in his head on a loop. 

His next subject is the unsolved death of Elisa Lam, found dead in an inaccessible water tank atop the Cecil Hotel, not all that long ago—from his personal experience, stories set in Los Angeles, especially in semi recent history, land best with his audience. They also keep him awake the longest. 

Still. He goes into the station the next night armed with a manila folder full of theories, all of them strange, mysterious, and in the end, as always, unsolved.

“On a scale of one to ten, how haunted is tonight gonna be?” Is what Brent greets him with the second Ryan walks into the station, and hides his amused grin, if badly, behind his cup of coffee. 

“ _Pretty_ haunted,” Ryan gives back, without a hint of irony, and he waits until he’s walked past Brent to roll his eyes, who still chuckles at him.

To the rest of the channel, Ryan’s show is … a little odd, to say the least. It’s not a time frame other people want, not really, so Ryan gets away with doing his curious little special interest hour—but it also doesn’t stop the rest of the station ribbing him over his steadfast belief in the supernatural.

Brent’s one of them; he produces behind the scenes, and he’s done enough to help Ryan out with his show when he started out that he doesn’t mind the ribbing, Brent’s earned his due. 

The guy on before Ryan has already left and the twenty minute music and ad break is on, so Ryan grabs a cup of coffee and settles into the studio, spreads out his notes on the show, and waits for the music to fade out. Brent, on the other side of the glass window, usually sticks around the first twenty minutes, in case of any technical problems. 

“It’s eleven on a Thursday, and you know what that means—” Ryan leans forward to the mic and pushes the slider up, so his intro music slowly starts in the background, “You’re listening to KYSR and this is—” Ryan barely resists doing a little drum roll with his fingers on the desk, “—the Witching Hour.” 

He ramps the intro music a little louder and lets it play out, enjoys the mood it sets, then fades it back out to talk over it. 

“Welcome first time listeners and old hats, I’m Ryan Bergara, and tonight—” His voice drops half an octave, “—we will shine our lights on the mysterious, unsolved death of Elisa Lam.”

It’s one of the more depressing stories, to Ryan at least—Elisa Lam was visiting Los Angeles and, by all accounts, having a good time, until the last day of her stay in the city, where she failed to check in with her parents and was declared missing. 

He introduces the story to his listeners, all the known facts. “—and it was only when hotel guests started complaining about low water pressure that her body was finally found: floating in one of the water tanks on the roof of the building.”

Ryan pauses, to let that gruesome detail sink in. “And with that, we’ll go into a short break, and come back with the theories _right_ after.”

It’s a case that has fascinated many people, but the fact that the case is still recent enough that a potential killer is still out there… Ryan shudders, and he takes a long gulp from his hot cup of coffee while he lets the short ad break roll—it’s a good point for the first break, and by now he’s been doing this long enough to know which parts in any case that will have listeners sticking around until after the break. 

Once the last of the ads stops, Ryan explains the security camera footage showing Elisa behaving oddly, almost like someone chased, and how the LA police eventually ruled the death ‘accidental.’ And the theories: a psychotic break, a freak accident, murder, or…

“There is one more theory,” Ryan starts, ominously, and pauses for effect, “Twenty years earlier, Richard Ramirez, a serial killer who murdered thirteen people and was a well-known Satanist, stayed at the Cecil hotel, and it looks like Elisa was arguing with an invisible entity just moments before she was last seen.” 

Ryan cuts to the music without another word, to let what he said ring out, and—the line lights up before he has even announced the number. It’s enough to make him raise an eyebrow, but then again, it’s also not that out of the ordinary. His show is odd enough to attract, well, oddballs, the kind who listen with dedication and already know the number.

Still. He waits until the music fades out, and picks up so he can break into his well-rehearsed spiel, “KYSR, welcome back to the Witching Hour, this is Ryan Bergara, who—”

“Why.” The voice on the other end of the line interrupts him, incredibly flatly, and it’s enough to stop Ryan in his tracks.

“Uh, what?”

“A ghost, really.” The caller clarifies and he sounds downright exasperated. “ _Why_ does it have to be a ghost?” There isn’t even a greeting, just a voice dripping with annoyance. 

Ryan opens his mouth, closes it again, confused, then blisters suddenly when he recognizes: it’s the same guy as last week. “If you look at the footage—”

“I _have_ looked at the footage,” the voice gives back, and despite himself, Ryan is a little pleased that someone actually looks at what he preps for the show—he puts a lot of effort into his research, the footage he uploads to his tiny corner of the channel’s website. “And all I can see is a confused, paranoid woman, and definitely not the ghost of a _serial killer_.”

“Well, Sean—” “Shane.” “Well, _Shane_ ,” Ryan stresses, annoyed, “How do you think Elisa Lam died?”

He doesn’t really give Shane any time to answer, instead continues on immediately, “She should not have been able to get to the building’s rooftop, she couldn’t possibly open the water tank by herself or climb up into it without a ladder—” 

“And a ghost could?” Shane cuts in, drily, and Ryan stumbles over his own words for a second, then catches himself again.

“A ghost could _possess_ someone, and—”

He gets cut short by a heavy, heavy sigh from the other end of the line. Ryan can’t see it, but he gets the distinct feeling Shane is rubbing his temples. 

“A _ghost_ can’t do _anything_ , because a ghost doesn’t _exist_ ,” Shane is talking slowly, as if he’s trying to explain this to a particularly dense child, and Ryan wants to be annoyed, he really does, but he can’t help the laugh that bubbles up—

“Did you just—are you giggling?”

Okay, maybe it’s more of a giggle. 

“I am not!” Ryan flusters immediately, “And ghosts are very, absolutely—”

“You were definitely giggling,” Shane states, matter of fact, and Ryan can feel the heat shoot up his face. 

“I was not, there was no such—” Ryan grits his teeth, then, speaking as fast as he can, goes, “Ghostsareadefinitelyrealthankyouforcallingbye!” and hangs up.

His ears are still burning when he cuts to the next music break, and all through it.

*

The unforgiving _ding, ding_ of his phone pulls Ryan from the sleep of the just the next morning, and he swats awkwardly at his night desk, taking two attempts before he can locate his phone and bring it to his face.

He’s not wearing his glasses, and he has to squint uncomfortably, but—

_bront 7:43am  
i think this is the first sane regular you ever got on the show, ryan_

Ryan groans and presses his head back into his pillow. _Of course_ Brent would take the side of the annoying dickwad caller, _of course_ he would think _that_ guy was the sane one. 

For a second, he tries to will himself to sleep, then—

He rolls over, picks up his phone again, starts typing furiously, because, no, this can’t stand. Backspaces. Starts typing again. Backspaces, before he settles on _if he becomes a regular, i’m resigning_ and sends. 

There’s barely two minutes of blissful silence before the phone dings again.

_bront 7:58am  
as if. i think he’s good for listener numbers. besides, if you stop talking about them, ghosts will probably like… come and eat you_

This one Ryan doesn’t dignify with a response, instead he just sighs, heavily. His phone chimes again.

_bront 7:59am  
booohooo, ryan, we’re coming for you, ryaaaaaaan, boohoo_

The next two text messages are nothing but the ghost emoji.

Ryan considers throwing his phone out the window, and pulls his pillow over his face—because this way, at least, the neighbors won’t hear his muffled shouts of frustration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...look, we all knew this was happening :') thank you to everyone who's been patiently waiting! i'm back with a fresh new computer, and hopefully no more data losses. thank you everyone for absolutely ensuring i would continue this one!  <3


End file.
